Fey recalls job serving cheese steaks before she made it big

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NEW YORK, March 9 (UPI) -- Tina Fey may be an award-winning actress, writer and producer now, but she recently recalled a teen-years summer job serving cheese steaks at a Pennsylvania pool club so her mother could swim for free.

"I made cheese steaks at a swim-club snack bar, so my mom could have free access to the pool. That was one summer job. My brother did it for years and then she transitioned me in to doing it so she could have employee access to the pool," Fey told reporters in New York while promoting her upcoming big-screen college comedy, "Admission."

The down-to-earth, former "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" star said her parents didn't raise her to think -- as the competitive characters in "Admission" do -- that her life depended on getting into one of the country's best schools.

"I wasn't growing up in some kind of private-school world where it was expected of you to try and get in to an Ivy League school. I tried a little bit, but I think people who grow up either because of what their family is into, or where they grow up, or where they go to high school and it's like, 'If you don't get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton, you're done.' I think that's craziness," said the University of Virginia graduate. "Nobody I grew up with tried that."

Starring Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Michael Sheen, Nat Wolff and Wallace Shawn, "Admission" is to open in U.S. theaters March 22. The film casts Fey, 42, as Portia, a straight-laced Princeton University admissions officer forced to re-evaluate her priorities when approached by an adorable, unconventional teacher and asked to consider recommending a brilliant student with a terrible academic record for acceptance to the Ivy League school.